Angels in the architecture
by LadyJanelly
Summary: Caught between dreams, reality and madness. Slash.
1. Default Chapter

Wednesday

T_his is not a perk. _I thought, looking down at the "John Doe" in bed eight. I had that thought every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the past three years. He was lean and beautiful, built like a dancer or swimmer. He was also a vegetable, his brain waves going through waking and sleeping phases while his body carried on it's autonomic functions without it. It was a pleasure and a torment to care for him. I could look, touch, but only in a professional way. Never as a lover, never as an equal. I set my bowl on the folding table by his bedside. As usual, he didn't move. I started the sponge bath at his face, washing around his hairline. The water made his pale blonde hair darker where it touched. It was getting long again. Of all my patients, his hair seemed to grow fastest, and I resolved to cut it for him on the next visit.

A drip of water rolled towards his eye, and he twitched a little, but that was all. I had seen it before, the little jerks and twitches, the tiny reactions to outside stimuli. His face was handsome; high cheekbones, soft lips, tall forhead, perfectly shaped nose. I had opened his eyes once, when curiosity got the better of me. They were such a strong blue that they almost didn't look real.

Careful of the IV anchored in the back of his left hand, I rolled him over onto his side, slipping the hospital gown off of his shoulder and arm. From the other side of the bed I rolled him back and took it the rest of the way off. With the sheet covering most of his body, I washed him and dried his back, his chest. There wasn't a mark on him, not a tattoo, not a dental filling, not a single scar. Except the pair on his back. It looked like a piece of farm machinery had attacked him, ripping through the skin and muscles over his shoulder blades. They were perfectly symetrical, and showed no sign that they had ever been treated. The edges of the scars were ragged, irregular. It didn't even look like he'd had stitches. I couldn't imagine the pain of that injury. With careful professionalism I cleaned him lower, my hands under the sheet. The insides of his thighs, behind his testicles, pulling back his foreskin to clean around it. I willed myself to disintrest. Sometimes he rose at my touch. I_ always_ had a rise when I washed him, however much I might not want to.

I put away the sponge, made sure he was dry, and re-dressed him. By rolling him to one side then the other, I got yesterdays sheet out from under him, and a new one to take it's place. Sometimes, when my loneliness and his physical attractiveness were conspiring against me and temptation was rearing it's ugly head, I would picture how the headline in our small town newspaper would look. "Faggot doctor wanna-be molests coma patient" was the most erection-deflating one I could think of. Sometimes even that wasn't enough to turn me off.

I went methodicly through all the day-to-day physical therapy Doe's doctor had prescribed. Moving his joints, stretching out his muscles. Sometimes I wondered how he had stayed a John Doe so long. Three years, and nobody had come to identify him, take him home, give his name back to him. Somehow that struck me as sad. Lonely. I made sure the sheet under him was smooth, then re-draped him with a clean top-sheet. The almost-empty "breakfast" bag was changed for a full "dinner" one. I made my neat, dutiful notes of his temperature, pulse rate, blood pressure on the chart, gathered my things, and went to the next bed.


	2. Awake

Friday

Some of the other nurses talk to the patients in the vegetable garden. I never did. If they can't hear you, it's just a waste of energy to speak to them. If they can, it seems a little cruel to bore them with details of aunt Bertha's affair or your dog's diarea. I appreciate that my charges don't say anything to me, and I feel happy to return the favor.

With neat snips of the scizzors, I shorten Doe's blonde hair. I have to cut it with him turned on one side, and I'm not sure it's going to be even. On the plus side, it isn't like he's likely to complain. I make sure every falling tuft of hair ends up on the towel under his head. I know that he wouldn't feel it if a tiny pinch of hair was left on his skin. He wouldn't try to push it away, he wouldn't itch. Still, I have enough empathy left that I cant imagine doing that to him.

Few other nurses last as long here as I have. Most people go into nursing out of a need to help people, to be the one to lend comfort, to feel like a small hero every day. I chose it because when I lost my brother; when I dropped out of med school less than a year from graduation, getting certified was the quickest, easiest way to be able to support myself without having a job that required me to think about it too much.

I rolled Mr. Doe onto his back, checking my handiwork. _Even enough._ I decided. The place I was raised was a small town with a large state-run hospital. It seemed natural to come back here when all my dreams fell through, when there was nothing left to care about. New nurses started here, with the extremely retarded, brain-damaged, and vegetatives. Most put in a transfer request their first week. I never did.

The john doe in bed eight came in about a month after I started. The day-shift nurse made a big deal over it, how he had been found in an alley in Brooklyn without a mark on him, except the old scars, but completely uncontious. She brought in newspaper articles that I read but pretended to be bored by.

With a little comb I carried, I went through his hair and untangled it. Even the slight waviness of his hair tended to matt up if it wasn't taken care of, when a patient was on their back all day and night. The woman who had the day shift here always commented that I took such great care of them. She never did more than the bare basics, from what I could tell. I'd gotten raises, but declined a promotion. Night shift was easier. No visitors coming through, their hopes and fears naked on their faces. No pain for me to absorb, to soak into me, to join the hurt already there in an ugly little party of misery.

Best of all, no touring med students, so fresh and optimistic. I always wanted to laugh at them, or scream warnings. Tell them that it wouldn't matter when it counted, that god or fate or whatever would take what it wanted whenever it wanted,and no skill or training or amount of caring would help.

I knew I was becoming melancholy, and tried turning my energy and attention to the task at hand. I washed Doe's face, cleaning the accumulated crud out of the corners of his eyes. The routine was soothing, rolling him, washing here, rolling him, washing there. He rose for me this time, and I had just realized that maybe I was washing "there" a little too thoroughly when his body suddenly arched up and away from the mattress. He took in a huge breath of air, pulling it through his throat like a scream in reverse. Startling blue eyes were wide open, and staring at the ceiling. His left hand came down on my hand and his fingers gripped my wrist with surprising strength.

Startled, embarrassed, I jerked my hand away from his still alert erection. Three years of vacation from his body had left his muscles weakened, and it wasn't too hard. He was still moving on the bed, trying to sit up or roll away, I couldn't tell. I had the rails on the side down so I could tend him, which made keeping him on the bed while I hit the emergency call button at the same time impossible. "Sir, please." My voice seemed out of place. I had the vague sensation that I was talking to myself. "You're in a hospital, you're safe. Please lie still." I put a hand on his chest. Awake, he was warmer than asleep, and his heart pounded furiously under my hand.

His eyes glanced around, trying to focus on his surroundings. He coughed and tried to speak, but it had been too long. His mouth was too dry, and his vocal cords were too unused to talking. "Lie still." I told him again, and he looked at me and nodded a little. I took that for understanding and took my hand off of his chest for just the second it took to stretch over to the call button and then back again. He turned his head, and I saw something flash across his expression. I followed his gaze, and saw that he was looking at the IV line going into his hand. A second too late I realized his other hand was reaching there, faster than I would have expected. The fingers of his free hand closed around the tube and pulled. Bright blood made tiny red spatters on the sheets and my scrubs. I put pressure on it with my thumb. A nurse from the station popped her head into the ward.

"Goddamn it, get a doctor!" I yelled. The girl turned and ran for the station. I felt color rising to my cheeks, realizing Doe was naked. The sheet had been pulled down to his hips by his thrashing, and my hand was pressing against his bare skin. He tried to speak again, and started to relax. I pulled the sheet up to cover his chest, but kept a hand on him. I didn't trust him not to twist around again. I could imagine him pushing himself off of the edge of the bed and breaking his skull on the floor. "It's going to be alright. You're in a hospital, and you haven't used your voice in a while. We'll get you some water and you'll feel better. Just relax for now. You're in good hands."

The doctor came running in, an older man, his bald spot poorly disguised by his comb-over, and a flurry of curious and useful nurses. I told him as precisely as possible what had happened, stumbling a little as my brain tried to edit. Everything I had done was professional, appropriate, but my attraction to him put me in doubt of myself, and I couldn't say exactly what I had been washing when he woke up. I ended up just saying that it was during the bath. I knew I was flushed, and I hoped nobody else noticed, or if they did, that they attributed it to the excitement.

A nurse raised the bed to a sitting position. The dr started asking Doe questions, slow and calm, yes-or-no types that he could nod or shake his head to. Did he know where he was? No. Did he remember his name? No. Doe looked over the crowd, those too-blue eyes meeting mine. A nurse walked between us to bring him a glass of water, breaking that gaze. "Get him down for an MRI." The dr decreed, and the nurses jumped to comply.

As Doe was taken away, I felt somehow betrayed, or robbed. Three years of taking care of his uncontious body, and now that he was better, it was all taken away from me, even the fantasies. Now he was a real person, who didn't know me, or care about me. He didn't even have a reason to. I felt the sensation of loss for the first time that I could remember since Rob's death.


	3. Cars

chapter 3

Saturday

Saturday, my day off, had gone by at its usual dragging pace. Alone in my apartment, I contemplated the boxes I still hadn't unpacked after three years, the picture frames leaning against a wall, still unhung and in need of dusting again. Somehow I almost felt that if I didn't move on with things, didn't change things, it would be like less time had passed since Rob died.

Alone of my brothers, of my family, he had seemed to understand me, to support me, as nobody else would or could. He had accepted my sexuality as a part of me, something natural. Mother tried so hard to accept it that she was overwhelming; always trying to set me up with any gay man that she met, or giving me clippings from newspapers and magazines about anything vaguely homocentric. It was exhausting when Rob was alive, more now that I was facing it without his support. Father was just as bad, but in a different way. He pretends I have no sexuality at all. He's given up asking me about girlfriends or when I'm going to get married, but he sure doesn't ask about boyfriends.

Eventually there comes a point when even I can only sit alone in an abandoned-looking apartment for so long. I ran some errands, got groceries and paid the bills, then hit the gym, in a self-punishing session that left me sore, exhausted, and capable of sleep.

The road was dark, and the wind sharp and cold. To my left black cars, each one identically black and shiny, passed at frightening speed. To my right, the shoulder dropped off sharply into shadow.

I was walking the same direction as the cars, their speed mocking the exhausted staggering of my steps. I stumbled, fell. My eyes turned back to look the way I had come, into the river of headlights, each one spaced perfectly with the one after it.

"A dream." My own voice whispered into my head. I felt my sleeping body, so far away, twitch between the sheets. Part of me wanted to leave, to wake, to erase this place and these cars and this road like shaking an etch-a-sketch. Knowing I could take control again eased that urge though, and the road was pretty, and the night not so terribly cold after all.

Now, knowing it was a dream, I was less afraid of the dark edge of the world, less pushed towards the unknown destination for myself and everyone else. I sat and rested, appreciating the beauty of the road. I looked up to see if there were stars or the moon, but they sky above was grey, lighter than the road, but what can you expect from dreams.

I should have known better than to trust a dream with roads. I saw the red car and felt my guts clench as I rose to my feet. There was a squeel of tires as the perfect order of the black cars disintegrated, all of them moving too fast and too close to maintain anything less than perfect order. One swerved to the left, and the front of the red car crumpled down and in, the back of it flipping violently over the nose.

"Enough." I thought, and felt my flesh-arms twitch. Car after car slammed into the tangle. They were all different now, mini vans and sports cars and old pickup trucks. A child's hand reached through an open window of a crushed SUV. "That's from a movie." I told myself, building distance. "This is a dream, and this is enough."

I fell into my body with a gut-wrenching twist, my mind reaching out for anchors to the real world. Cars outside my window, not crashing, not burning. The neighbor's radio. The pillow under my head and the crimp in my neck. I held these things, clung to them in my head until I knew the dream was gone.


	4. Crazy

Sunday

So here it was Sunday again, and I was coming in to work, through security, changing in the locker room, going up to the fifth floor to the vegetable garden again. Knowing that my prize rose was gone, had sprouted legs on me and walked away. I wondered if it was too late to call in sick, but the idea of spending another day with nothing to do had no appeal.

The lights were half-off as usual, and I flipped the switch that turned the rest of the fluorescents on. And there he was; sitting in a wheelchair at the foot of the bed that he had spent three years in. There was something strange about his bearing. He had to be weak from so much down-time, but instead he looked almost regal; the curve of his fingers off the edge of the armrest, the tilt of his jaw. He looked like a prince, sitting there in his hospital pajamas with a blanket across his lap. If I thought I was attracted to him asleep, the sight of him awake was stimulating in a way that left me faintly dizzy.

"Hello." I said, awkward. I glanced around. There was nobody else in sight. Nobody awake at least. The two rows of silent sleepers rested quietly. He smiled at me. The light filtered through his short blonde hair, giving it a glow.

"Hi." He replied. "I'm sorry. I'm not in your way, am I?"

I shook my head. "I can work around you." _Good morning, sleepy-head._ I wanted to tell him. _You're beautiful today._ But no, he wasn't a fantasy now. Instead I asked, "Why are you here? How did you get here?" and my voice sounded annoyed, even to me.

He looked puzzled for a moment. "I'm trying to get my bearings. I'm...here for a reason. Things are... different, for a reason." I didn't blame him for being disoriented. "Did you take care of me?" he asks, and I feel my face get hot as I'm changing the sheets under the older woman in bed one.

I cough, trying to clear a throat that feels too tight. "I did."

"For how long?"

I switch the IV bag. "Three years." He's watching me, and I feel like a germ under a microscope, like he can see my desire and guilt through my skin. And he doesn't say anything. And long minutes pass as I check bed one's vitals and move on to two, changing sheets.

"My name is Raeandaphael." He says at last. It's an odd name, there's almost a Jewish inflection between the last two syllables. "Would you like to call me Ray or Andy?"

"I ah, haven't heard that name before. Which do you prefer being called?" I assumed he had remembered it, but what a weird name.

He shrugged. "You choose."

"Ray." I decided, like it mattered. "I'm Garreth." I finally said, remembering my manners.

He smiled. "Thank you, Garreth. For taking such good care of me when I needed it." He tries to rearrange himself on the chair, and I can see how weak he really is. I go over to help him. His skin is warm and alive and awake under the pajamas. _It's appropriate,_ I keep repeating to myself like a mantra.

"Thank you again." He says once he's comfortable again. "Dr Dayton says I should rest, but I think I've rested enough, don't you?" I nod and go back to my work. "To tell the truth, I'm really not used to this, this frailty."

I glance over. I don't want to talk to him, I don't want to connect, I don't want to interact, but I can't stop myself. "So you remember now?"

He grins, and his grin is faintly wicked and proud. "I never forgot. There are just certain things you only tell certain people. There was nothing I could tell dr Dayton, and he was willing to believe amnesia."

"But you're telling me?" I bundle up a dirty sheet. "Why?"

"Because I'm meant to." He watches me for my reaction. I feel myself frowning.

"Meant to how? What wants you to tell me?"

He shrugs. "Call it what you will. The Higher Power."

I'm getting angry and I know it. My beautiful sleeping John Doe replaced by this...this...annoying person.

"I should take you back to your room." I say, and he shakes his head.

"Soon. Garreth, I'm not like you, I'm not one of you." And I felt like I'd been pushed out of the closet by a bull-dozer.

Embarrassment burned on my cheeks. "Sir..." I started, with no idea what to follow that up with. He held up a hand, interrupting me.

"I'm an angel," he said, and I realized with a pang that he believed it. "A Fallen, to be more precise. I know this is hard to process, but even Fallen, I know that everything I do is for a purpose, that everything I do is guided by a stronger hand." He watched me, his eyes so sane and his words so crazy. "I woke up...different." he says, making a puzzled helpless gesture with one hand. "There must be a reason, and I feel the reason is you."

It was all too much. I was glad I wasn't outed, especially if he wasn't "one of us." On the other hand, I was a little sad he wasn't "one of us," and clearly crazy besides. I laughed, trying to keep it light, and walked to the door. I called the nurse at the station and she came over. "Can you find someone to help Mr. Doe to his room?" I asked. She looked down, flushing and guilty and nodded.

I looked back at him, wondering how he had talked the nurse on his floor into bringing him here and the nurse on this floor into letting him sit alone and unattended among the vegetables. "You're going to get someone fired." I told him, pushing his chair to the door.

"I only present a crossroad. Everyone chooses which path to take. All of _you,_ at least." I shook my head and closed the door behind him. It was too crazy for me, and too much work besides. I made a mental note to talk with Dr Dayton in the morning.


	5. Logic?

chapter 4

Monday

Dr Dayton listens to everything I tell him about the night before. It's morning, which means he's been awake for just a few hours, and I'm over-due to be in bed. The Doctor asks me careful questions about how I've been feeling these past few weeks, how I've been sleeping. I tell him like normal, though my normal of the last three years is like anyone else's insomnia. The only thing that seems to help me sleep is extreme physical exhaustion, which is great for my physique but bad for my social skills. I get tired of the questions before long and remind him that I'm just a nurse bringing him an observation about a patient and that I'm not on the clock here and would like to get home. He still seems concerned, but wishes me a pleasant day.

I change to street clothes and go home. I sprawl on the bed and stare at the ceiling. The waking day passes around me, and I must sleep a little, because I wake up. One day is blending into another as I shower and change into clothing almost identical to what I was wearing before the shower.

When I get into work, I'm relieved that "Ray" isn't there waiting for me, but I cant help myself from being disappointed at the same time. I want to argue with him, reason with him, make him be sane. I'm halfway down the line, bathing patients, changing sheets, when he arrives. I wasn't watching, and he doesn't announce himself. One of the nurses must have opened the door and pushed his chair inside. When I notice him, he's sitting there with that smile of vague amusement, watching me.

"You spoke with Dr. Dayton." He says, and I nod.

"I needed to. Helping patients is my job."

"I respect that," he says, watching me work, "but I cant let him think I'm mentally ill. I explained to him that you and I must have had a misunderstanding, and that I was still a little disoriented and must have confused you too. I apologize if this makes things harder at work for you."

I groaned. This was not my week. "I don't think I want to talk to you anymore."

He shrugged, eyes never leaving me. "If that's the way you chose, that's the way it will be. However, I feel that there is something you want from me, or need from me. I want to give it to you."

I had a split-second fantasy, as clear as a memory, of him in my bed with me, face-down under me, his scarred shoulder-blades flexing and pushing as he met me stroke for stroke. I felt color rise to my cheeks; I felt sunburned, I flushed so hot. The corner of his mouth turned up, as if he knew the exact image I had thought. I wanted more than anything to change the subject from my wants and needs, and I couldn't find the strength to tell him to get out.

"Look. About this angel stuff that you were talking about. You really believe all that?"

He laughed, a light quick sound. "Ah. We're at the part when you question everything I say. You ask me if I can prove it, I say no. I don't know the future, I don't know what you're thinking, I don't know any of the past except what I have experianced." I blushed again, this time because that had been exactly what I was thinking. "You'll ask if I can heal the sick, or raise the dead. I am...was, an angel, not a saint, and Fallen besides, so sorry, no miracles. What _do_ I have to back up my story? Unquestioning certainty that it is true, and memories of all I have seen since before the Fall."

Yeah. That had been what I was about to say. In the list of questions there was only one he hadn't touched on. "If you're an angel," I corrected myself, "A Fallen, how did you end up a vegetable in a hospital?"

He winced. "I'm just as easy to hurt as any man, but much harder to destroy." He smiled, acknowledging the irony, "It must be a counter-balance for having no soul to live forever after my flesh is gone. There are ways for us to hurt each other, however, and I am..unpopular with the other Fallen. I've said things that make them question themselves, their reality." His voice drifts off a little, and his eyes are unfocused. "I seem to be the only one to realize that I'm still a tool, we all are. The end result has to be the greater good. I have to believe that or go mad. Sometimes it gets more lonely than I can bear."

He closes his eyes, resting his forehead on his hand, and I don't know what to say or do. How do you respond to that? His world might be imagined, but the distress it caused him was very real. I watched him for what seemed like a long while. "I would like to go back to my room." His voice was an exhausted whisper.

I asked another nurse to keep an eye on my room, and I pushed Ray back to his. He moved slow and tired, trying to push himself out of the chair and onto the bed, but couldn't manage. "You're getting stronger." I comment, trying to be encourageing as I lift him from under his arms, helping just enough and leaving him with as much dignity as possible. I ease him back on the bed, making sure his pillows are comfortable, and cover him with his sheets.

"Get some rest." I say with a smile that I don't feel. I don't touch his hair, I don't brush his lips with mine. He closes his eyes, pale lashes shading the blue of them.

"Goodnight, Garreth," he murmured. I walked out, and didn't look back.


	6. Goodbye

chapter 6

Another Monday

The next few weeks settled into a comfortable pattern. Dr Dayton started seeing me in the mornings, off the clock, and off the record. He gave me someone I could talk to, trust. I ended up telling him about my family life, my brother's death, my three years of celibacy. I never could trust enough to tell him about my fantasies for Ray, or where my hand had been when Ray woke up.

I asked him one day, why he was doing this, donating his time, and he said someone had spoken to him about the choices people make in their lives, especially the choices of omission. Choosing not to make a choice when they see a car broken down on the side of the road, or another person in pain.

Once, I asked him how Ray's counseling and therapy was going, and he told me that was as confidential as how my counseling was going, and that since he didn't speak to Ray about me, he wasn't going to speak to me about Ray. While that was a little frustrating; I didn't get a sneak peak at Ray's world, it was quite a bit reassuring; Dr Dayton wouldn't be talking to Ray about my life and problems.

Ray didn't speak any more of his Fallen-ness. The arm-chair psychologist in me wondered if his sudden exhaustion that last night had been an effect of his brain finally slipping back into place. He visited me on my shift less, and when he did, we talked about his physical therapy, his difficulty getting identification, his prospects of finding a job. He never seemed frustrated by it all, the walls in his way to going back to the world outside the hospital. He trusted things to work themselves out for the greater good, no matter the size of the obstacle.

From what I could see, Ray was doing better every day. He seemed more robust, more regal, and if possible, more attractive. He started pushing himself around in the wheelchair, and then graduated to a walker. It always surprised me to see him standing. With so many years of him lying down and me bending over him, I had gotten the impression that he was shorter than I was. Standing, he looked me straight in the eye.

It was on a Monday that he told me he was leaving. "Physically, I'm almost well. I've got a bus pass to come here for therapy. Dr Dayton has helped me to get some financial aid, and the state would rather put me up in an apartment temporarily instead of a hospital room."

I realized he was saying goodbye. "Is there anything you need?" I asked, trying to find some reason to stay in his life.

He shook his head. "I am provided for." I felt that strange moment of disconnect, and he gave me that almost-smirk grin. "The nurses on five had a furniture and clothing drive."

I swallowed, and held out my hand to him. "Well, it was nice knowing you." He took my hand in both of his and squeezed it gently.

"I don't think that we are done." He said, releasing it again. It wasn't that he sounded sure of it. He smiled. "We'll wait and see."

"We'll see." I agreed, remembering why it might be a good thing he was out of my life forever. "Goodbye, Ray." And I went back to work, and he went off down the hall.


	7. Wrong

To make up for the last stupid-short chapter, here is an incredibly long one. Enjoy.

* * *

I was on my way home in the morning after work with an arm-load of groceries. It had been a few weeks since Ray left. I was trying to go back to life as it was before he awoke, but it was hard. I knew it was bizarre, but I missed taking care of him. I missed seeing him, awake or asleep, on a daily basis. And there, in the emptiness of my life, he was waiting in the hall outside of my apartment, leaning against the wall, looking for all the world like I should be expecting him. He smiled that frustratingly self-satisfied smile and moved to help me with the groceries.

I handed them off to him, pleased and wary at the same time. I didn't let myself smile. Much. He was wearing what must have been the donated clothing. It was a fashion train-wreck, but he still looked like a prince, in jeans too long for him, with the cuffs rolled up and a belt keeping it on his hips, a worn sweatshirt in a distressing shade of green, and blue sneakers that must have been from the 70's. Still, he had a sense about him, a pride. I was impressed, watching him move. He looked so strong, considering how recently he had been a vegetable.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him. He followed me into my apartment. I looked around, as if seeing it for the first time. I wasn't proud of it.

"Homey." He commented, looking at the boxes and incompleteness of the place. I love sarcasm.

I pointed to the kitchen counter. I didn't have a table or chairs. "There is fine." He set them down and lingered there, glancing around curiously. "Ray, what are you doing here?" I finally asked. He smiled at me. As much as I enjoyed the sparks his smiles sent through me, I was quickly becoming conditioned to worry when I saw one.

He shrugged. "I'm supposed to be near you."

I sighed. "The angel thing again?"

He started taking groceries out of the bags and setting them on the counter. "I could lie to you, if you'd prefer." He offers with annoying cheer. I take the groceries out from in front of him, and finally grab the cans from his hands. He lets me take them. My fingers brush his as I do it.

"No, no, I just...I'm not really comfortable with this." I'm flushed, frustrated, aroused, and a little disturbed. The kitchen seems much too small for the two of us. He blinks at me as if he hasn't seen me before.

"Oh." He says, like he's finally understanding. He smiles and takes a step towards me, his hand covering mine on the counter. Even though I'm broader than him, certainly stronger, I feel trapped by the suddenness of the motion, the intensity of his gaze. I put a hand out against his chest, and he's warm through the sweatshirt.

"Ray." I say, licking my lips. "What are you doing?"

He smiles. "I just figured it out. Or part of it at least, why you're so touchy around me." I push him away, not wanting to hurt him, but needing more space. He steps back easily, looking puzzled. "You're upset." He comments. "You don't need to be. It's right." And he's so casual, so damn chipper.

I frowned. I felt anger rising through my stomach to my chest. "Look, I'm not the most social person. I didn't invite you here."

He laughs, but it's not unkind. "I think you're thinking of vampires? And I'm here because I'm meant to be."

I don't know what happens to me next. The anger in me swells to beyond the size that I can contain. I've never been in a fight. I've never hit anyone in my life. I clench my fist and I step forward and I punch him full-strength in the stomach. He doubles over, sinking to his knees on the floor, but there's no surprise on his face, no pain. "Was that meant to be?" and I'm screaming, but my voice seems far away.

He's so calm, and it's surreal how gentle his eyes are. He doesn't raise a hand to defend himself, he doesn't flinch away. Red films over my vision, and it's the memory of my brother's blood on my hands as he bled to death just close enough to touch, trapped with me in the mangled car, just too far away to help. I strike Ray again, kicking him as he tries to push himself up. I hear the wind go out of him, and his knees curl reflexively towards his midsection.

"And Rob's death? Was that meant to be?" and I'm kicking him again, and crying. I feel sick and dizzy and I'm clinging to the edge of the counter. Without aim, my shoe finds the sharp curve of his eyebrow, and there's blood in my memory and in my kitchen as I split his skin. "Tell me!" I demand, drawing back for another kick.

His eyes meet mine, and they're still gentle and full of pity. The drip of blood follows the curve of his cheekbone for a short distance before tracing down his pale cheek. I freeze. "Those were all choices, as far as I know." And he sounds so rational, and honest. "If I were kicking you, that would be predestined."

He tries to push himself to a sitting position again, and the horror of what I've done sinks into me. I've either beaten a mentally ill ex-patient of mine half to death, or I've assaulted a celestial being. In that moment I couldn't say which was more likely or evil. I want to throw up. I want to shoot myself. But there's no time for it. I'm suddenly aware that I'm easily strong enough to have done real damage.

"Oh god." I hear myself choking. "Oh god." I reach for his shoulder and he lets me touch him. "Lie down." I tell him, medical authority coming back into my voice. He sinks tiredly to the floor. I whip off my jacket and fold it under his head. "I need to call 911."

"It's okay." He tells me, reaching for my hand. I hesitate. Calling an EMT would mean the change of a lot of things in my life. Changes I probably deserved but didn't want. "I'm okay." And I half believe him, despite the fact that his eyebrow is bleeding in the way only a head-wound does, down his face to soak into the collar of his shirt.

He seems to be breathing fine, so broken ribs aren't an immediate concern. "I'm going to examine you." And it sounds ludicrous. "Tell me if anything hurts." I give him a napkin to hold on the eyebrow while I start the steady progression of touches that will tell me if anything is broken or ruptured.

The punch worried me most, but there was no swelling, no pressure. When I asked him if it hurt, all he would say was that it was tender. His eyes were sad, and the first hints of pain were lingering around them. His skin was so soft and warm under my fingers that it made me want to die all over again. I knelt above his head and gently manipulated his neck. I kicked his face. It boggled my mind. I couldn't imagine it, but I had done it. "Tender?"

"Some."

I eased his head back to the make-shift pillow and reached into a drawer and got out a kitchen knife. I didn't trust his ribs to stay put when I moved him. He watched me with complete faith as I opened his shirt from the hem to the bloody collar. He didn't flinch, but I did at the sight of the bruises. The right side of him was already darkening from just under his arm to his waist. I carefully and thoroughly checked for broken bones. It all seemed badly bruised, but nothing felt broken.

"I'll be right back." I warned him, and went into the living room, digging through never-unpacked boxes for the first-aid kit I used to carry in my trunk. One had been in Rob's trunk, too, for all the good it did.

When I get back to Ray, he's laying with his eyes closed, one hand protectively over his ribs, the other keeping pressure on his cut. I wet a towel, get a pair of butterfly-sutures out of the kit, and kneel by him again. He looks up at me, and I don't meet his eyes.

"I need to clean it and get it closed." He nods, and I gently move his hand aside. Fresh blood trickles out, and I clean it and get the closures on as fast and neat as I can. It looks good when I'm done, and I'm pleased by my work at least.

"I'll help you sit up, then I'm going to wrap your ribs. You'll be more comfortable that way." He nods again, and the strain is starting to show in small ways; the tightness of his lips, the thin line between his eyebrows. I get his ribs wrapped, then half-lift him to his feet. I try to help him without touching him, or at least not on the bruises. There's only one place for him to rest comfortably and warmly in the whole apartment, and that's my bed, so I take him there.

I remember the moments just before I struck him, and realize with a sharp new sense of loss that he had been flirting with me, making a pass at me in some strange sort of way. I help him into bed and cover him up. He looks so odd resting on non-hospital sheets.

"I am so sorry." I whisper, as he looks up at me. He catches my fingers in his, and I wont pull away.

"It was a choice," he says gently, "and a choice made cannot be unmade." Shame overwhelmed me. "But every moment is a chance to make a new choice, to accept the old choice and move forward. To move into being a better person." He releases my fingers. "I'm okay." He tells me again, and I know he doesn't mean that it makes what happened not real, or important. "I don't want any more doctors."

I nod, tight lipped. I felt cold, and dirty. I get him some aspirin, water, an ice-pack for his eye. I do all that I can, and then I cant bear to be there watching him hurt. "I'm going to go take a shower." I say, needing some excuse to leave the room. "Call me if you need me."

I go into the bathroom and turn on the shower. I strip naked, dropping my clothes on the floor. There's smears of blood on the sleeves of my shirt. I push it away out of sight. I step into the water and it's too hot, but I don't change it. My life seems to get heavier and heavier, and I sink to my knees, steam blurring my vision. I close my eyes and let the water stream over me, too overwhelmed to even think. Time passes. The water's heated at a communal boiler, and I've never known it to run out, so I don't even have that gauge to tell how long I've been there in the water.

The bathroom door opens and a spear of ice stabs through my chest. Fear that he needed me and I wasn't there...or that he reconsidered and called the police after I left him. "Ray?" I call, standing and opening the curtain.

I shouldn't have worried. He's standing in my bathroom, just the slightest curve in his otherwise proud posture betraying the pain he must be in. And he's naked except the elastic bandage I put around his ribs. He takes the stride towards the tub, and all I can do is stare. Another step brings him into the porcelain enclosure with me.

"Tell me to stop." He says, and it's a dare, a challenge. He takes a smaller step, and I give up ground to him. The tiled wall is like ice against my back. "Tell me to leave." He leans forward, and my throat refuses to let air out. My lips are parted, and he kisses them, strong, demanding, powerful. I yield myself to him. His fingers tangle in my hair, and with the slightest of motions he steps back, leaning against the shower wall under the towel rack and I move with him, kissing him back now. The last of the blood runs down his chest in a pink wash, thinner and thinner each second. The wrap around his ribs turns dark with the water.

He tips his head back and I kiss down his neck. I'm disoriented for a moment. It's like I'm fantasizing and having my fantasy fulfilled in the same moment. The tears of shame, sorrow, and joy blind me, and there is only the water and his body. He strokes my hair, and I sink to my knees. I take him in my mouth, and it's like the culmination of three years of foreplay.

I've had plenty of sex before this, and this is nothing like any sex I've ever known. I feel myself slipping away, dissolving in a sea of pleasure and desire. My entire body aches with the force of my erection. And nothing matters except pleasing him. He's pinned to the wall and I'm holding his hips between my hands, and my mouth is keeping him held there. He writhes in my grasp, crying out in ecstasy when some flick of my tongue or press of my lips overwhelms him with sensation. I know I'm not alone in my reaction.

One of his bare feet goes up on the corner of the tub, and I know I'm the only thing holding him up. I can reach behind him with one hand, and I do, pressing against him until he relaxes and my finger slips into his body. A ragged cry slips from between his lips, and his hips made small quick rocking motions against my mouth. I took him as deep as I could and then some, resisting the urge to choke on him.

With a harsh cry, he came, his hands holding me by my hair tight against him. Drown or swallow, so I swallowed, the thick rich essence of him pouring down my throat. He clenched reflexively around my finger. I realized I was still crying, or maybe crying anew. His fingers slowly relaxed their grip on my hair, and I felt him going weak in the knees as his strength left him. I gently disengaged, first my finger, then my mouth.

I held him by his hips, the side of my face resting against the flat of his stomach, and he gently stroked my hair.

"I love you." I whispered, unsure if he could hear me over the shower. My cock throbbed in time with my pulse, unsatisfied and demanding. I didn't care if he was crazy. I didn't care if he was a servant of the god who had taken my brother from me. His body in my arms made me feel whole, filled, in a way I hadn't in years, maybe not ever.

"I love you too." He whispered, long after I had assumed he hadn't heard me. He stood there, petting me gently, letting me hold him, for a long while. The maddening pressure of my desire slowly relaxed, enough that I could think clearly at least.

"Do you feel better?" he asked. I nodded a little and stood, making sure he had his balance before I stopped supporting him.

He smiled at me, touched my cheek. His face was starting to swell around the cut. "You need to put the ice back on that." I ignored the erection between my legs.

"Is it always like that?" he asked, once I had him wrapped in a new elastic bandage, covered in warm blankets and the ice-pack back on his eye. He seemed content to be naked between my sheets. I sure wasn't going to argue with him.

I slithered into bed beside him, careful to touch him gently. At his question, I shot him a puzzled look. "What do you mean?"

He smiled contentedly. "Mmm. Like that." Curiosity flickers across his features. "And how I did and you didn't."

I chuckled, rolling to face him, my chin at his shoulder. "You say that like you've never had a blowjob."

He shrugged. "I haven't." he hesitates, looking like he wants to add something.

"Never?" I recalculate his apparent age, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. Subtract the time he spent in the hospital. It's impossible to believe someone as beautiful as he was still virginal.

"I haven't had the um...equipment before this."

He watches me for my reaction. I watch me for my reaction too. No rise of anger, no sense of frustration. If he believes it, I can let him believe it. At least for today. Either way, I'm glad I was so giving to him. That I made his pleasure such a high priority.

"Then I'm very flattered to be your first, and no, it's not always like this. It's never been like this." I lightly touched his hair. Once I was allowed to be affectionate with him, I didn't want to stop.

"And the other part? The balance of pleasure?"

I shake my head. " Oh, that part. It shouldn't be that way every time, it can damage a relationship, but sleeping with a hard-on once wont kill me." He nodded, looking relaxed with the situation. "Besides, there's not much you can do in your condition. If there's another time that you want to do something for me...when you're feeling better, I wont say no."

"And you blame yourself for my condition." Sometimes he cut to the heart of a thing and there was no disputing it.

"I do." I replied. "I've never struck anyone in my whole life. I...I don't know what happened to me. I just felt so angry, and frightened. At...at Rob's funeral, everyone kept telling me that things happen for a reason, and God has a plan." I expected Ray to get tense as we talked about this, to shy away from me, but he didn't. He listened with quiet sincerity.

"I thought you were telling me the same thing. Maybe…" the ache of guilt returned, but softer this time. "I think maybe I believed you for a moment there. That there was a plan, and a planner, and tools…and I struck out against the tool."

I took the ice from where he held it against his cut and set it on a box by the bed. "Leave it off for five minutes." He nodded a little.

"Can I tell you what I know, what I believe about the way things are?" Ray asked me. He was cautious, but I think it was more worry about upsetting me than getting hit again.

I nodded.

He took a breath, centering his thoughts. "Okay. The Higher power created angels. I remember the moment of my creation. I know this is true. We were created without freewill, and there wasn't much for us to do except worship." He looks saddened. "But I guess being worshiped by angels is sort of like being told you're loved by a prostitute. So the Power made man, with free-will, and knew the love of their worship was real." Ray closes his eyes. "It hurt those of us who loved loyally. About a third rose up in rebellion. We thought we were so strong, at least inside, to make such a decision, to act on it, to suffer for it." The corner of his lips curve into a wry smile. "Except that it was impossible for us to rebel without will if the Power hadn't wanted us to. So clearly the rebellion was a farce, a way of putting the illusion of a two-sided battle on the board."

"Alone of us all, I was chosen to understand this. It makes existence very hard sometimes. I feel like the red checker on the chess board sometimes. I run, they hunt, the dance goes on."

I digested his words. "in the end, what's it all about, though? What's the point?" I rested my fingertips on his sternum, feeling him breathe, his heart beat.

"For me, or the higher power?"

"Either. Both."

"I can't claim to understand the Power. A lot of the time, it feels like a huge game of solitaire. The Celestial and the Fallen are pieces that are controlled. You humans are the random factors, choosing odd things at odd times, shaking up the predictability of the patterns."

I listened, fascinated in an abstract sort of way. I didn't exactly believe, but there was no point at which to break his theory apart.

"For myself, I have to believe the Power is working towards the greater good, that even the actions of the Fallen yield results that make more things better for more people than if they had not acted."

I frowned. "So your being with me is an act of charity meant to make the world better?"

He rolled over with a wince to face me. He cupped his hand gently around my cheek. "I believe my desire to be with you is guided by another hand, for another reason, but I feel only the affection, love and lust of it. My beliefs could be wrong. I could be just an amnesiac used car salesman from Jersey with delusions of grandeur, but my feelings would still be real, and true."

I chuckled at the thought of Ray selling used cars. If he could make a story like this seem almost plausible, it would be no stretch to get a buyer for that Pinto that's only been driven by a little old lady on Sundays.

"Does that help at all?"

I thought about it for a moment. "It does. In a lot of ways." He smiled, softly tired, and I realized how late the day was getting, and that I only had a few hours before my next shift. I ran my fingers through Ray's hair. It was getting long again, and this time I had no urge to trim it.

"You rest," I told him. "I'll stay awake and make sure you're okay."

"I am okay." He protested, but closed his eyes anyways. I watched him sleep for a long time, relaxing beside him as the sun went down. It was beautiful, the sunset shining like gold on his hair. I turned off my alarm clock before it could go off and wake him, and called in sick to work.


End file.
